Friday, 4 December 2009

#Climategate - Should Al Gore lose his Oscar?

Roger L. Simon and Lionel Chetwynd, both Academy members, are among a small, meandering pack of known political conservatives still believed to be on the loose in the liberal bastion of movie-making.

In 2007, the Academy sanctified Gore's cinematic message of global warming with its famous statue, enriched his earnings by $100,000 per 85-minute appearance and helped elevate the Tennessean's profile to win the Nobel Peace Prize despite losing the election battle of 2000 to a Texan and living in a large house with lots of energy-driven appliances.

Chetwynd and Simon were prompted to make their hopeless demand this week by the leak two weeks ago of a blizzard of British academic e-mails purporting to show that scientists at the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit systematically falsified data to document the appearance of global warming in recent years.

The university is reportedly investigating the claims, which added dry fuel to the never-ending political debate over whether the Earth really is warming as a result of human activity or if it's just normal natural cycles and the debate is what's heated. The demand to withdraw Gore's award provides yet another opportunity to argue.

Too bloody right. While they're about it, they should take away his fucking Nobel prize and stick his fucking thieving head on a pike, as well.

Hate to rain on everyone's parade here but y'know this could all so easily blow over. Though 'climategate' has injected a healthy dose of scepticism in the minds of the public it hasn't changed the minds of our political elites

The Green agenda is still in the ascendant, dodgy emails or not. What is needed to really change things is a political leadership that is capable, and has the guts, to break with the whole environmentalist narrative. I simply don't see it coming- certainly not from 'dopey' Dave's Tories.

It would also help if a section of the Meeja broke ranks as well but with the Beeb, Sky News and ITN still 'on message' I can't see that happening either.

@microdave: Err- no. Ice floats because it takes up more water than it is formed from. So the extra volume is in the air (the tip of the iceberg). When it melts, nothing happens, levelwise. The only melting ice that has an effect on sea levels is ice on land, which is water that is prevented from flowing to the sea by virtue of being solid. Damn nearly all of the ice at the North Pole is sea ice which could all melt and not affect the sea level one millimetre. That just leaves glaciers and Antarctica. and not all of Antarctica is covered in ice anyway.

@ bayard - It has been a long time since I was in a School Lab, so I won't argue with your explanation. I was quoting another comment. But in either case the dire predictions of sea level rise running in to tens of feet isn't going to happen.

Just proves that the whole business is not "settled", and is never likely to be. Which is a damn good reason for not using it to destroy the economic prosperity of the world.